Patient safety doesn’t improve through punishment, vigilance posters, or telling people to “be more careful.” It improves when leaders design safer systems, support speaking up, and focus on learning instead of blame. This archive brings together blog posts, podcasts, and reflections on patient safety through a Lean lens—exploring medical errors, near misses, psychological safety, leadership behaviors, and how healthcare organizations can reduce harm by fixing systems rather than blaming individuals.
Health care’s infectious loss – Video – Business News Short post for today – but an important one. Here’s a great video from CNN last week about preventing patient infections with Lean (or as they called it “inspiration from Toyota”).…
Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority Supports ‘National Patient Safety Day’ – Press Releases – CNBC.com I was walking through Boston Common this morning and saw a woman with a homemade sign that said something about patient safety. I stopped her and…
It has been over 10 years since the publication of the Institute of Medicine’s study on preventable medical errors: To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System. So how are we doing? Are there still nearly 100,000 patients dying…
Op-Ed Contributor – Health Care’s Infectious Losses – NYTimes.com FINALLY, a major contribution to the discussion about how we need to improve the quality of care delivery. That’s how we are truly going to bring costs down – by improving…
Tamra Kaplan Named COO of Long Beach Memorial Medical Center – Yahoo! Finance There aren’t too many details in this story, but Lean *has* led to some good results at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center in CA… benefits to the…
Lean Leap to Health Care #8 (click for Part #7) by Scott McDuffee “When a baby is born, a pleasant chime can be heard throughout the hospital and smiles come across the faces of all who hear.” Now dated, I…
I blogged recently about a radio ad from the Detroit Medical Center trumpeting their technology and patient safety efforts. In my further travels, I saw this billboard (from a hospital that’s a competitor of a client… and no, I won’t…
Thanks to XM Radio, I was able to listen to Sunday’s Detroit Red Wings playoff game and the WJR radio broadcast from Detroit (the “great voice of the Great Lakes”). I heard a commercial a few times that I managed…
So I’m finally watching the DVR-ed episode from March 10, 2009, that gave widespread exposure to the issue of medical mistakes. Oprah began the show by citing the statistic that errors cause more deaths than “breast cancer, AIDS, and car…
I’m still experimenting with video podcasting, after my first attempt with Jamie Finchbaugh. LeanBlog Video Podcast #2 is content you may have seen and heard before — the video from Kevin Frieswick and MetroWest Medical Center with the device for…
I’ve struck a chord with a few nurses with this post from late last year: Why Do Hospitals Have to Rely on Vigilant Patients and Families? I asked: I’ve written before about my questions of why so many hospitals abdicate…
LeanBlog Podcast #65 is a discussion with Kevin Frieswick, a Lean Process Manager, with MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham, MA. I found Kevin earlier this year when I discovered their YouTube video about innovations at MWMC, which included a unique…